Shining so clearly ~ January 2, 1992

David Heiller

The stars stood sharply in the cold Christmas Eve sky as Noah (nine) and I headed to Faith Lutheran Church last Tuesday night. I pointed out Orion, who stood guard over our mailbox.

Orion usually guards the outhouse when I see him, but the season is moving, and Orion is moving with it. He’ll visit the outhouse in a few hours.

I pointed out the three stars of his belt, the stars that outlined his broad shoulders, his knees, his sword. Noah liked the sword part.

We headed up the road. Α moon just-past-full was rising on our right, like a squished orange. We watched it climb above the snow and brush. It would soon blot out the weaker stars of the sky, leaving only stalwarts like Orion and the Big Bear.

The Bear arched above Couillard’s house, but I couldn’t see a bear. I’ve never seen the Bear in Ursula Major, but it’s hard not to see its more common name and shape: the Big Dipper.

I pointed the dipper out to Noah, and he spotted it right away. I told him to follow the last two stars of the dipper out a bit, and he could find the North Star. “It stands all alone. It’s right above the road. That’s how I know this road runs due north and south,” I said.”

“I see it,” he answered with excitement.

“Stars were important a long time ago,” I told Noah in my official father voice that will soon bore him to tears. He’s not quite that old yet though, so he answered, “Why?”

“People can tell where they are by the stars. They use a sextant and it tells them right where they are on a map,” I said.

David and his kids circa 1992

“Like a compass,” he said.

“Yeah, kind of,” I answered, not being an expert with either instrument.

“Hey Dad, the moon is moving with us,” Noah said. It did look that way. It seemed to keep a few steps ahead on our right. Now it hung over the open field east of the church, away from the brush.

There was mystery in the night, with Orion and this moon and the North Star and all.

At church, we joined the rest of the family for the candlelight service. We listened as Pastor Sjoblom read passages from the Bible, passages without heavy lessons. Passages that told a simple story, which kept us listening and smiling even at this late hour.

We listened to the simple refrains from a clarinet played by Karla Kropp. No fancy organ to pound and pump us up, just single notes by a girl, strung together into sounds that fit the little church like a warm mitten.

We lit candles. The yellow light glowed off faces of friends and neighbors, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and most important, of children.

Mollie stood proudly at my side, holding her candle up straight like the pastor had told us. Her eyes glistened with the light.

We sang Silent Night. I remembered how my Grandma Heiller would treat us with the German version, “Stine Nacht,” when we begged her enough, back when my Candlelight was young.

Then the wonders of candlelight at church on Christmas Eve returned from somewhere deep inside, deep in the past, and warmed me once again.

Afterward, Noah and I hit the road again, back the quarter mile to home. The words to an old Christmas time came to mind:

(Listen to the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpizGdABJkI)

‘Twas on a night like this, a little babe was born.
The shepherds gathered ‘round, to guard him till the dawn.   Above them shone a star, a star so wondrous light,
That never since in all those years have they seen one half so bright.
Shining so truly, shining so brightly,   guiding their footsteps from afar.   It led them through the night;   A path to love and brotherhood   by following its light.

We walked home quietly, followed by the moon, and the North Star, and the Big Bear, and Orion, and those other witnesses to the star that made this all possible.

Maybe it was on a night like this...

Missing shoes: a sign of Christmas ~ December 9, 1993

David Heiller

The missing shoes convinced me that Christmas is here. The missing wedding ring was the first clue, but the shoes convinced me.

David and the kids at the kitchen table.

The wedding ring disappeared on Monday morning. I had showed the kids at breakfast how shiny the ring was. It had been polished a few days earlier. Noah looked at the ring, then Μalika looked at the ring. Then the ring was gone.

I first noticed it at work. I reached for my finger to feel the ring. It’s a habit I have when I talk to pretty women (like my wife). It was gone.

All day my finger felt naked. We called the school, and asked if she had taken it to school. She hadn’t. We believed her, sort of. She knows the value of that ring to me. She wouldn’t give it away, or trade it for some Skittles, not on purpose at least. But drug addicts know the dangers of drugs, and still take them. That’s the way my daughter can be with shiny gold things.

When we got home, we looked all over the house for it. Mollie said she remembered putting it on the dining room table. That’s the table that you can’t see the top of, because it is covered with Christmas ornaments and candles and wise men.

My stomach started fluttering. The ring is handmade. There’s only one other like it, and my wife wears it.

Then Cindy went to turn on the radio, and there was the ring, and suddenly everyone was forgiven, including the person who probably left it there—me.

As for my shoes, they still haven’t turned up. I took them off somewhere on Monday night, and Tuesday morning they were gone. They might be on the dining room table too, and we might find them after Christmas.

Meanwhile I’m wearing a black shiny pair that I last wore on my wedding day in 1980. They are too tight. That happens when you have babies, I hear.

Christmas is a beautiful time of year. It’s also a time when people forget where they put their wedding rings and shoes.

Malika could turning all things,
 live or pretend, into her friends.

It’s a time when eight-year-old girls forget about their Barbies and play with Mary and Joseph and the three wise men instead. I didn’t know they could carry on such interesting conversations. They were mostly silent when I was a kid. Not to my daughter.

It’s a time to walk through the woods looking for that perfect tree, and finding it along with a few other treasures, like the paw prints of a wolf, and a pileated woodpecker that laughs and flies away like a tiny jet.

If you are eight, it’s a time to wear the skirt that is supposed to go underneath the Christmas tree. The skirt looked good on Mollie. Happy Petersen of Askov made it, and it made Mollie happy. It fit her too. She looked like she stepped out of a Jan Brett children’s book when she wore it. I didn’t think she would give it up, but like the ring, I was wrong. Cindy put it under the tree on Monday night. It looks good there too.

David and Red at the Askov American office.

Christmas is also a time to count your blessings. Red Hansen is doing that these days. He had double bypass heart surgery on November 12, and if you wonder why Askov seemed a bit lonely recently, it’s because Red hasn’t been roaming the streets.

He finally got the okay to drive last Friday, so he stopped in the office for a visit on Monday. He said he’s feeling better. Then he mentioned that he has a new valve in his heart that came from a pig. Apparently the heart of a pig is similar to the heart of a human, which explains a lot about humans.

Red was glad he got the pig valve, instead of the other kind that sends a ball through a wire cage. The other kind is like a check valve, he said. It sounds more like Chutes and Ladder to me. It makes a steady clicking sound, he said, and Red worried that this might have thrown off his rhythm with his accordion.

I allowed as maybe you can get them to change their beat. Yeah Doc, I’d like a heart valve in three-quarter time, please. I’m a waltz man.

Red also wondered how old the pig was that graciously donated its valve. What if it was an old codger, and had only another year to go? Red worries about things like that, with his tongue in his cheek.

Think about it. And let me know if you find a pair of brown shoes.

Some priceless Christmas gifts ~ December 20, 1990

David Heiller

Christmas is a time of giving. Sometimes the gifts are worth money. Sometimes they are worth much more.

Take the gift of a phone call home. I called my mother last week, without really planning to. I’d just received a letter from her, and had written recently too. But I needed to talk to her.

I didn’t have much to say. Our Christmas plans, when we could meet in Minneapolis. She talked about the weather in Brownsville, the big snowstorm they had. Noah took the phone, and told her about his deer antler quest, how Grandma Marge at school had promised to bring him one. Then I took the phone again, lingering on small talk, until we said good bye.

After I hung up, I felt better. That calm old voice from home carried with it some inner strength that I needed. Now I realize that phone call was an unknowing gift from Mom.

How about the gift of a walk in the woods? We tramped down an abandoned township road on Saturday afternoon. Binti lead the way, sniffing for squirrels, criss-crossing into the woods on either side.

Binti was moving slower, but never 
turned down a walk, or a Christmas cookie!

It was a joy to watch her, because she’s 11½, and spends more and more of her time in front of the wood stove. She’s stiff in the rear, and almost totally deaf, but there she was, the old Binti, tail wagging, nose to the ground but always keeping us in sight with that radar that dogs seem to have, always knowing where they are and where YOU are.

I must have gone soft on the walk too, because when we stopped for a cup of tea and some cookies, we handed one to Binti. I repeat: WE GAVE A CHRISTMAS COOKIE TO OUR DOG. Never in Binti’s long history has this happened. She seemed to know it too, because she had the cookie chewed and swallowed before we could blink, like she didn’t want us to change our mind. Maybe she knew it was a Christmas gift.

Walks have a lot of gifts, like seeing a couple of deer take off from their snack of poplar bark, bounding across the trail in front of you, then watching a seven-year-old boy leave a slice of apple at that spot, for the deer to find as a treat.

Having that little boy’s hand fit like a glove into your hand as you walk, looking at tracks and searching the ground for the elusive deer antler. These are all great gifts.

I mostly did a ridiculous number of cookies myself,
but when I could get together with my friend
 Carolyn, we made sandbakkels. David loved them!

Cookies are, too. Cindy has been baking almost nonstop, with the help of us kids now and then: Santa’s Thumbprints and peppernuts, Russian teacakes and sugar cookies, rosettes and chocolate cookies.

The cookies seem to grow endlessly on the counter, row upon row, filling Tupperware and freezers and kids and dads. When I got up last Saturday morning, and saw a counter full of peanut blossoms, I thought for a split second, “Not more cookies!” But in the next instant, I came to my senses and realized, “You can never, I repeat, NEVER, have enough Christmas cookies.” Cookies are a Christmas gift, all right.

These are a few of those Christmas gifts that are worth more than anything you can find at the store. You’ve got your own special ones too, and I hope you enjoy them. Have a merry Christmas.

Christmas and winter are for the birds ~ December 29, 1994

David Heiller

My brother-in-law, Randy, and I were playing catch with a Frisbee on Christmas Day. Actually, we were playing catch with our dog, MacKenzie.

One of us would throw the Frisbee, and, Mac would race after it. Sometimes the Frisbee would float slowly over the snow, and the dog would leap and catch it.

The Frisbee was a gift to Mac from my sister-in-law, Nancy, who has a big heart with pets. MacKenzie’s acrobatic catches were fun to watch. They were her way of saying thanks, her gift back to us.

The turkey was on the grill, and the house was filled with the smell of dressing and sweet potatoes. The sun shined brightly on a 40-degree day, the second warmest Christmas on record, I learned later.

All of a sudden, the trees outside the house were filled with birds, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, and grosbeaks. It was noon, and they descended on our feeders like it was time for their Christmas dinner.

We always have some birds around our feeder, but this was like someone had rung a dinner bell. They stayed for about five minutes, long enough for me to sneak in the house and tell my wife, Cindy.

Evening Grosbeaks

Cindy is a bird lover too, so she had to get up and tell me they were evening grosbeaks. I can never keep pine and evening grosbeaks straight. (Here’s a trick to help: evening grosbeaks are yellow, like the sun in the evening.)

I don’t know why those birds came in and left like they did. Some bird expert could tell me, but I don’t really care. Just watching them made that gorgeous Christmas day even more beautiful. It was like a Christmas present from Mother Nature.

WE ALWAYS HAD BIRD FEEDERS when I was a kid. I don’t think Mom bought much bird feed, because we didn’t have a lot of money. But any bread crumbs or cracked walnuts or hickory nuts or corn would go out to the backyard by the big elm trees. Grandma would fill grapefruit skins with peanut butter or suet and set them out for a special treat.

Lots of birds came, and all were welcome, except the sparrow. Grandma was a bird racist. She hated sparrows, which she called “sparrah” with disgust in her voice.

Once I got a BB gun for Christmas. I snuck up to the feeder and shot a bird. It was a sparrow, so maybe I justified the killing. Mostly though, Ι was responding to the instinct to kill that most 11-year-olds possess.

My sister, Mary Ellen, saw me, and came out and said it was wrong, unfair, and just plain rotten to shoot birds at feeders, even if it was a sparrow. She was mad!

Maybe it was a lesson about prejudice. All I know is I never shot another bird at a bird feeder, and I passed the instructions sternly on to our 11-year-old son when he got a pellet rifle last year.

My favorite bird was always the cardinal. It’s the prettiest bird in Minnesota. They would look flashy with their red coats against the white snow. Someone would holler for us to look whenever a cardinal landed at the feeder. Unfortunately we are too far north for them, unless you are lucky like Liz Espointour in Askov, who has three at her feeders these days.

THERE ARE A LOT OF LOGICAL reasons for feeding birds. You feel good feeding them, helping them survive. They are fascinating to watch. Each is beautiful in its own way, even the sparrow. Sorry, Grandma.

But there is a serious side about bird populations that we need to keep in mind, painful as it is. Laura Erickson of Duluth writes about it in her book, “For the Birds, An Uncommon Guide.”

This excellent book is written like a diary. Most days the author tells fascinating tidbits about bird encounters that she has had. But her December 27 entry is more somber. She writes: “When we moved to Peabody Street in 1981, our feeders overflowed with birds. This time of year we had scores of grosbeaks, hundreds of siskins or redpolls, several chickadee flocks. Twelve years later, squirrels outnumber birds, we’ve only two chickadee flocks, and the last two winters we’ve had no finches at all.”

On December 28, she writes: “The destruction of the rainforest is tragically obvious, but fragmentation of northern breeding habitats may be equally disastrous...” She goes on about all the forces that are causing bird populations to dwindle.

There is something you can do to help in this important fight, besides keeping your feeders filled. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has a nongame wildlife program that you can donate to on your Minnesota tax forms.

Donations are used to help preserve wildlife species that are not traditionally hunted or harvested, but are in jeopardy because of habitat loss, illegal killing, or other environmental threats.

Last year six percent of all taxpayers donated to the fund. The average donation was $8.14.

Editor's note: Laura Erickson's website
https://www.lauraerickson.com/

1989 Christmas letter to Grandma ~ December 21, 1989

David Heiller

Sunday, Dec. 17, 1989

Dear Grandma:

We had our Christmas program at Sunday School today. I thought you might like to hear about it. You would have enjoyed it.

Miss Malika and her Christmas dress.

First the good news. Mollie and Noah said their parts without a hitch. Noah said, “Grant us now a glad new year” just as plain as could be. Mollie said: “But a lowly manger was his place to sleep.” The bow on her belt even stayed tied, and she only waved to me once.

The other kids were something too. Like Matt Peterson when he said, “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities.” Matt said that last word correctly. He did NOT say “inquinities”. Matt was worried about that. When he practiced it around the Peterson home, he would say “inquinities.” Matt is the kind of kid who could come up with a pretty funny definition for “inquinities.” But not in front of a full church.

His big sister, Connie, had the toughest part of the pageant. She stood in front, jammed her left hand into an imaginary pocket, looked at her feet, then straightened up, and said her bit, four long sentences, 81 words, without a stammer. Now that was a REAL Christmas Program part, the kind I remember when I was a kid and you were watching me. Was I ever that good in sixth grade?

I don’t know why I like Christmas programs so much, Grandma. Remember how you used to like to sit in the waiting room of the parking ramp when we went shopping in LaCrosse, just to watch people pass by? Christmas pageants are like that to me. You can watch children pass by. Wearing new sweaters and dresses, or stuffed in double breasted suits and red ties, or blue jeans and AAU tennis shoes. And some of those kids, like Natalie Booker, so tiny she surely couldn’t memorize her part, yet she did, and better than most of the others. Some with changing voices, like Jeremy Kosloski, a 13-year-old bursting out of his clothes. Some suddenly pretty, like Corrine Cronin in her blue dress, growing up before your eyes.

Then there’s the music. Bev Peterson played the piano, and the notes just poured out when she did “Jesus, Name Above All Names.” The kids sang great too. That surprised me, because sometimes forget how well kids can sing, when they want to. Mona Sjoblom, the director of our Christmas pageant this year, asked me to play the guitar on “Away in the Manger,” and I gladly said yes. It was a different version, with a lovely melody that’s just about as good as the original. Even people who grumbled about the new­fangled rendition complimented me afterward.

What a joy it was to sit in front of those 25 kids and listen to them sing. Loud, clear voices, not all on key mind.you, but that was all right. They haven’t learned yet that they don’t all have perfect voices. I wish they never would. No one in the church complained.

One voice rang out over the rest, Joey Gibson’s. You can always pick Joe’s voice out at our Sunday School. Just follow your ears. It cuts through the others, it climbs to the high notes and reaches them. It tinkles like a bell on a Christmas tree, when angels get their wings. It’s a pure voice, a beacon that mixes with the other voices to make those four songs extra special.

Grandma, we pulled off a darn good Christmas program again. Isaac Sjoblom and Jonathan Zuk didn’t fight like they did in prac­tice. Tory Johnson missed a word, but went back to the beginning and said it perfectly. April Williams read half her part, then heaved a sigh and looked up and said perfectly: “God sent His angel Gabriel to tell Mary that she was to be the mother of His Son.”

Noah and Malika with cousin Sarah.
  Christmas, 1989.

Time stood still for an hour, and this crazy, busy holiday season suddenly didn’t seem quite so crazy and busy.

Even Mollie behaved. She didn’t come down to me when I was playing the guitar, like she did in practice, three times. And like I said, she only waved to me once, and the bow on her belt stayed tied. She tied it herself. Guess she’s growing up too.

And after she said her part, she came to me and sat on my lap. We hugged, and then we sang, “What Child is This?” That was pretty close to Heaven in my book.

I guess you know all about that though.

Love, David

Some thoughts on snow and Christmas ~ December 15, 1994

David Heiller

A friend called from Texas last Thursday, December, 8. She complained about the weather. It was 90 degrees, and everybody was suffering from the heat.

“Gee, that’s too bad,” I said. I didn’t mean it, and she knew that from my tone.

“What’s the weather like there?” she asked. I looked out the window. It was snowing hard. The wind was blowing too.

“Pretty nice,” I said. I meant that.

Things will even out for her. There will be days when it is 35 below zero here, and it will be 70 degrees there. She will get the last laugh.

But I wouldn’t trade our winter for Texas even if I was retired or independently wealthy or both.

We drove home through a nasty blizzard on November 29 this year. Twelve and a half hours from Chicago to Sturgeon Lake, through rain and sleet and ice and finally, close to home, a blizzard.

It was hard, and dangerous, and a few people thought we were foolhardy.

I don’t think so. That’s winter here. Sometimes you take chances with it. In a perverse way, that’s one of the things I like about winter.

We don’t face saber toothed tigers any more. Most of us don’t even climb mountains or shoot rapids. But by golly we can drive through a snowstorm.

When you take a chance and face adversity and win, it makes you stronger. That’s an old-fashioned idea, but that doesn’t make it any less true. You only have to read accounts from our forefathers who settled this country to know it’s true.

We have some old family pictures taken in about 1960. Our car is parked on the other side of the street. It is almost completely covered with snow. That’s where Mom had left it.

She had come home from Minneapolis on the train with my sister that day. When they got to LaCrosse, a snowstorm had hit.

It was 13 miles to home. The last seven miles she followed the tire tracks of a Brownsville man who had chains on. The highway was closed after they got home.

Noah outside the front window.

She got to Brownsville, then pulled over across from the house, left the car, and trudged in with Lynette.

You mark the passage of time with storms and experiences like that. I’ll always remember driving home through a blizzard on Thanksgiving eve, 1983. It was the day of my Grandma Heiller’s funeral. We made it, barely, and my wife and I still talk about it as the worst weather we’ve ever driven in.

And who can forget the Halloween blizzard of 1991, five days after the Twins won the World Series? Three feet of snow in one storm.

The first snow is hard. Breaking out winter coats, putting on boots. Finding the ice scraper under the car seat where you threw it last spring, and scraping ice off the windshield. Warming the car up in the morning before you get in. Hauling in firewood. Shoveling snow.

For a few minutes, you wonder why you put up with this.

Cross country skiing is one of the things that make 
us love winter, though in later years 
we became avid snowshoers.

But then something clicks, and you accept it, and even start to enjoy it.

You break out the skis or snowshoes or snowmobile. Throw an orange in the backpack, and sit on a log in the woods with your kids and wife and dog, and eat that orange. Man is it tasty! Your mouth waters just peeling it.

And there’s no feeling like early December, after the first snow, when the sun is shining and the house is bright with its soft light, and you know Christmas is just around the corner.

Christmas without snow just isn’t Christmas. It’s basic to our nature. Mom, apple pie, baseball, the Vikings, and a snowy Christmas.

I spent two Christmases away from snow in Morocco. I remember walking under the brightest moon I’d ever seen on Christmas Eve and thinking, “Jesus was born 1,977 years ago, about a thousand miles due east, and maybe a night like this.”

It was warm and dry and shepherds were watching their flocks up in the hills. Oh it, beautiful, and oh it was lonely. Partly I missed my friends and family, and partly I missed the woods and the river and ice skating and snow.

If there’s one problem with the Christmas story, and I did say if, it is that Jesus was born in the desert. He should have been born in Αskov or Willow River or Finlayson, or even Rutledge.

Not only should there have been no room in the inn, it should have been 20 below zero. That stable would have really been cozy, with ox and lamb blowing steam into the air like dairy barn at milking time.

And it should have been snowing outside, big white flakes that would float down like feathers.

Those of us who want to rewrite history, who love snow, will sing a different tune in about two months. We’ll wish for spring in February and know it is two months away. We’ll hit a few 40 below nights and remember why some of our friends do go to Texas and Arizona for the winter.

But that’s about the time those folks are thinking about heading home to Minnesota. Home, where it snows.

The magical seaon is here ~ December 14, 2005

David Heiller

Cindy called me to the window on Saturday morning. “Look at the deer,” she said. A couple of does were making their way down the hill, taking their time, nibbling here and there.

Snow sifted lightly over them, over the deck and woods, adding another coat to the start of this very fine winter.

Very fine winter? If you question that sentence, head to Arizona. If not, then Saturday had it all.

Not just the deer in the woods, but the birds milling around the feeder. Even they seemed happy. And people did too.

Across the road, Duane Thomford was checking in on his old stomping grounds. He has a bachelor pad on wheels out in the field next to some unharvested corn. It’s not a bachelor pad in reality, since Marilyn is very much alive and well. But it’s not a place that Marilyn or most other women I know would fall in love with. It’s basically a shed on wheels, with a bunk bed and an old trash-burner for furnishings. But there are windows on all four sides, great for watching coyotes and deer and turkeys and neighbors like me. Best of all it’s in the middle of a piece of paradise that Duane knows better than anyone. Add those silent snowflakes that wouldn’t quit falling, and it was a heavenly spot last Saturday. Duane didn’t say that, but it was there, in his eyes, in the way he relaxed against his truck. Happiness. Winter. They go together.

In town, I stopped to see Vance Mitchell, and found him getting out the Christmas decorations, with the able assistance of Julie and Matt. Or more likely it was Vance doing the assisting. That’s the way it is with Christmas decorations, at least at our house. The Mitchells already had their inflatable snowman set up outside, ready to rise up and greet the travelers on Highway 26.

Up the street, Dan Moriarty leaned against a snow shovel in his yard, talking to a neighbor across the road. “Got your decorations up yet?” he asked me, but not really waiting for an answer, because he put his up a week ago, and there was a little pride in that old truck driver’s voice when he told me that.

“You probably never took them down from last year,” I countered. That brought out Dan’s familiar guffaw. Either that or Mary Ellen put them up for him. But I didn’t say that. Those old bachelors can get touchy sometimes.

A red bellied woodpecker at a suet feeder.

I stopped at the Meiners’ house to pick up some suet. Maureen greeted me at the door with her friendly smile. “The birds are so busy, must be a change in the weather coming,” she said, and I could tell that that wouldn’t bother her at all. Bring on the winter, those tough old Langes believe.

Even at Mom’s, winter was settling in just fine, thank you. Cindy brought up the little Christmas tree that had waited patiently in the basement for 11 months. They put on a few of the old ornaments. That gave me a chance to admire the decorations left in the box. They won’t fetch any money on Antiques Road Show. But they are priceless in the eyes of the former kid that once put them up. Those silver and gold ones that look like miniature disco balls when you give them a spin. The balls with silhouettes cut out of deer and Santa and candles. Even the plastic ones are special. Old and faded, the tiny ribs on their surface worn smooth by many hands many years ago.

Cindy and I headed home late in the afternoon. We drove past the Helke farm, its muted red barns the only color in the black and white landscape. The snow kept falling, clinging to the dark tree branches.

It was a magical time at a magical season, the one that always hits in early December, before Christmas. Saturday was the day.

Anyone who doesn’t think winter is beautiful hasn’t driven the back roads of Houston County in the fading light of a snowy December afternoon, with Christmas just around the corner. You can ask Duane and Vance and Dan and Maureen and Mom and Cindy if you don’t believe me.